I've not ventured online yet so can only comment on single player but there's not much a deterrent when it comes to taking corners badly, smashing into opponents etc. That'd be one recommendation I'd make for the next in the series (which I sincerely hope there is).

I been playing horizon on a pad when mates are over and its been a good laugh, its taken over Blur which was a old favourite and all enjoy it.

Myself, I prefer to get the wheel out and play forza 4 doing circuit races online most the time when theres nobody around my place or online.

Happy with horizon tho and its been great fun and i'm looking forward to the rally expansion, but I do think the way playground games set the rivals mode up and not using clean laps with no rewind for the leaderboards is a bit shortsighted imo.

I had a funny AI bug on this race a couple of times where the other car would immediately steer into the bloke who lights the flare to start the race and get stuck. I tried to take a picture but he isnt there on the replays

Similar thing happened to me, one on one and I picked an underpowered car. Knew I wasn't going to win but was enjoying the drive regardless, then the AI spun out just before the finish.
I appreciate stuff like that, makes it feel less like you're competing against a robot.

Seen quite a few crashes in single player races, and I love cruising around only to see a group of 4 or 5 cars screaming past in a race of their own. Unfortunately my final race (the head to head against Flynt) was a big let down, he totalled the FXX early on and must have got stuck, he had only completed 26% when I finished.

secombe wrote:
Unfortunately my final race (the head to head against Flynt) was a big let down, he totalled the FXX early on and must have got stuck, he had only completed 26% when I finished.

Well, the final race is a bit of an immersion breaker anyway. It appears that normally it's scripted so that Flynt zooms past you and has a good margin until the very end of the race. In my case, he quickly gathered a 10s+ lead that I was unable to catch though the race went very well on my part. About 10-15% before the end Flynt just let me catch him by squirming along the road. I passed him in a flash and never saw him again in my mirror.

My thoughts after 17 hours of driving, this will sound incredibly negative, but it's all said against a backdrop of loving the majority of it...

- Awful ending to the 'story', did they run out of time? So much build up and then absolutely nothing, very odd.
- Inconsistent world...titanium shrubs, invisible walls (particularly driveways) plus lots of annoyances with the world in general, it's actually incredibly bland and restrictive when you look closely, they won't even let you drive into the multi-storey. Ultimately that will limit the longevity of it quite badly, in my opinion.
- I know it has an arcade slant, but nothing takes you out of the moment more than a bunch of Lamborghini's racing on dirt tracks.
- It badly needs more punishing crashes, a head-on at 200mph scrubs about 20mph from your speed, and wall-riding can be used as a genuine tactic. If nothing else it's killing the online side of things.
- Too much too soon, particularly with VIP/pre-order incentives you have access to Hypercars etc within minutes, they could/should have expanded the single player game massively with little effort, and made progression through the classes far more prominent.
- Inconsistent selection of cars, they had a 'no race car' rule but included the Zonda R, FXX etc which are not road legal, but stripped out whole layers of lower class cars (where are the Renault's, for example.

So in general, massive amounts of potential, a great first attempt but still lots to do to really take it to another level. TDU2 mixed with Horizon would be the perfect game, but as it is what one does brilliantly the other is awful at.

- I know it has an arcade slant, but nothing takes you out of the moment more than a bunch of Lamborghini's racing on dirt tracks.

Thats been bugging me for a while as well, especially when I first saw a 599XX struggling with the revs honing it around on a dirt track. Its just not cricket.

The only explanation I can think of is that in the Colorado desert area there would be some "off the beaten path" style dirt tracks leading off into different areas, best suited for AWD cars but occasionally any car could drive down them?

Got this yesterday. Liking it so far, but I could do without the story or the characters. Although because of their ability to annoy me quickly, it wants to make me beat them in the races, so maybe the designers were successful to make me care after all?

motti82 wrote:
100% completed this game, enjoyable and rarely a grind, how it should be done for more games.

Same, 100% yesterday for the single-player. The only downside for me was the race with Flynt at the end, which I found was rubber-banded badly and a pretty unenjoyable race too. Doesn't take the gloss off though, brilliant game.

Need to get cracking on some MP now as I haven't touched it up to now.

happyhammer81 wrote:
Same, 100% yesterday for the single-player. The only downside for me was the race with Flynt at the end, which I found was rubber-banded badly and a pretty unenjoyable race too. Doesn't take the gloss off though, brilliant game.

A guy on the Pistonheads forum did a few experiments with the final head to head, Flynt's time is indeed rubber-banded to death, even on the easier difficulty settings he will put in a time in the low 8 minutes if you're quick enough, there was nearly 90 seconds variation in his times on the same difficulty setting. It also increases the traffic in the latter stages if you're quick.

Same with some of the normal races he tried as well, the AI was lapping quicker on Easy than it was on Insane depending on how you drive.

secombe wrote:
A guy on the Pistonheads forum did a few experiments with the final head to head, Flynt's time is indeed rubber-banded to death

Well I knew something was up when after about 2 minutes he spun out badly enough to disappear off the map. Then all of a sudden he virtually appears in the rear-view - and it happened more than once. Was a chronic pain in the arse of a race.

These sorts of games are always rubberbanded in an effort to keep the racing 'exciting' all it ends up doing really though is removing much of the thrill as youknow no matter how well you drive the AI can be made to drive faster than shoul dbe possible to maintian the illusion of close racing.

Rivals will be pretty much the entire game for me now I've finished the story as I love a bit of hot-lappery. I particularly like it in Horizon because of the lack of tuning, it puts me on a level playing field (I can't/don't tune IN FM4).

Unfortunately they made a critical error in not banning Rewinds in Rivals, as far as I'm aware you can use unlimited rewinds with no penalty, and it doesn't even flag it up like it does in FM4 (by way of a dirty lap)

Rivals will be pretty much the entire game for me now I've finished the story as I love a bit of hot-lappery. I particularly like it in Horizon because of the lack of tuning, it puts me on a level playing field (I can't/don't tune IN FM4).

I was messing about with difficulty settings last night and upped the AI to hard (must have been being a fanny and on medium before that) and the AI got vicious. Changed the racing from fun but non too stressful to carnage and all the better for it.